As I walk around San Pancho, I notice details I wouldn’t see if I drove the same route. The doors of houses especially catch my eye. A patchwork of designs, colors, styles and materials, they give a glimpse of the town’s past, its social strata and its distinctive character.
Scattered throughout San Pancho are homes the federal government built in the 1970s to replace the village’s palm frond huts, and all have the same door: sheet metal on the bottom, frosted glass covered by bars on the top. Near these modest places are recently built, architect-designed homes. Casa Palmera, for example, has a handsome colonial-style door made of wood and embellished with fancy architectural hardware. A little eye-level door-within-the-door allows the owner to peek out and see who is knocking.
On San Pancho’s main street is what I call the “Picasso door”: an abstract design of a brown cat on a background of electric blue. Cunning pink door knobs form the cat’s mouth. I speculate that one of the town’s many artists lives in that house.
Outside the village proper the doors, like the houses, tend to be more uniformly upscale. My favorite is at Casa Cielito. Made of aged wood weathered to bluish-gray, this door looks like it came from an old hacienda. Its rustic quality makes a perfect contrast to the clean, modern lines of the entry surrounding it.
The prize for ambitious building design goes to what is known locally as the “Taj Mahal,” a villa with adjoining rental units. Domes, finials, pointed arches, balconies and balustrades—the building does indeed resemble the Taj Mahal. Except for the doors. They are like the sheet metal ones used in San Pancho’s earliest houses. Maybe the builder ran out of money.
Scattered throughout San Pancho are homes the federal government built in the 1970s to replace the village’s palm frond huts, and all have the same door: sheet metal on the bottom, frosted glass covered by bars on the top. Near these modest places are recently built, architect-designed homes. Casa Palmera, for example, has a handsome colonial-style door made of wood and embellished with fancy architectural hardware. A little eye-level door-within-the-door allows the owner to peek out and see who is knocking.
On San Pancho’s main street is what I call the “Picasso door”: an abstract design of a brown cat on a background of electric blue. Cunning pink door knobs form the cat’s mouth. I speculate that one of the town’s many artists lives in that house.
Outside the village proper the doors, like the houses, tend to be more uniformly upscale. My favorite is at Casa Cielito. Made of aged wood weathered to bluish-gray, this door looks like it came from an old hacienda. Its rustic quality makes a perfect contrast to the clean, modern lines of the entry surrounding it.
The prize for ambitious building design goes to what is known locally as the “Taj Mahal,” a villa with adjoining rental units. Domes, finials, pointed arches, balconies and balustrades—the building does indeed resemble the Taj Mahal. Except for the doors. They are like the sheet metal ones used in San Pancho’s earliest houses. Maybe the builder ran out of money.
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